For the first time, seismologists have captured detailed images of the deep
underground processes that give birth to most of the planet's new surface along
mid-ocean ridges where the seafloor pulls apart. Early results from one of the
largest marine geophysical experiments ever undertaken suggest that the
separating seafloor guides magma up to the mid-ocean ridge, where it erupts and
cools to form new oceanic crust. Seismologists from Brown and five other
institutions reported the first detailed look at these mid-ocean upper-mantle
processes in the May 22 issue of Science.

Menopause has been theorized as an adaptation of evolution that allows older
females to help their offspring raise a third generation. But a recent study
published in the journal Nature found no evidence for this "grandmother
hypothesis" in 35 years of data on birth, death and fertility among populations
of baboons and lions in Tanzania. Lead author Craig Packer, ecology professor
at the University of Minnesota, and co-author Marc Tatar, assistant professor
of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, say their data fit the
theory that reproductive decline begins once a mother can no longer expect to
successfully carry a new infant to its reproductive maturity.

Tadpoles can hear, except for a brief period during metamorphosis when they
go deaf, as their auditory systems rewire for adulthood. Until the recent paper
by Brown University researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, scientists had assumed tadpoles were deaf, even though it's
well known that adult frogs rely greatly on their sense of hearing to catch
food, to find mates and to defend their territories. Postdoctoral researcher
Seth Boatright-Horowitz and Andrea Simmons, professor of psychology and
neuroscience, speculate that tadpole hearing may provide a model for
understanding how hearing develops in fetuses in the womb.

Musical mappings of the heartbeat

From heartache to heartthrob, the human heart has inspired a lot of music,
but Brown University senior Zachary Goldberger may be the first to use
heartbeats as the melodic template for composition. He and his colleagues
mathematically transposed the heart rhythms from 15 people into melodies.
Goldberger found a "dance-like plasticity and variability" in the beats, which
he attributes to the inherent complex mathematical structure in the time
intervals from beat to beat, known as a fractal, which describes a wide range
of natural phenomenon. Pathological hearts lose this fractal nature, while
healthy hearts fluctuate more widely in time and melody. Using the professional
name Zach Davids, Goldberger released a compact disc recording of "Heartsongs"
two years ago, and he helped create an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science
that translates a visitor's heartbeat into notes.

Speak and you shall be seen is the concept behind a camera that
automatically tracks who speaks during a meeting. Patents and an exclusive
licensing agreement for technology developed at Brown allow computer-based
computations to determine a talker's location from data acquired through an
array of microphones spaced closely or far apart. The technology was invented
by Harvey Silverman, dean and professor of engineering at Brown, and his former
student Michael Brandstein, a professor of engineering at Harvard University
who earned a doctorate at Brown.